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| Nevada Congressional Candidate To Challenge Primary Election Results |
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| By Warren Stewart, VoteTrustUSA | ||||
| August 28, 2006 | ||||
 Republican Congressional candidate Sharron Angle (pictured at right) has aanounced that she will challenge the results of her August 15 primary loss to Secretary of State Dean Heller in the hope of nullifying the election and holding a re-vote. Official results gave Heller a 421 margin of victory in the contest to choose a candidate to run against Democrat Jill Derby for Nevada’s Second District congressional seat, currently held by gubernatorial hopeful Jim Gibbons.At a press conference in Reno on Friday, Angle said that rather than requesting a recount, she would challenge the election results in district court "based on errors in the voting process," which she maintained "clouded the outcome of the election to the point that the true winner is unknown." "In this situation, the voters do not know who would have received the majority of votes if errors did not occur," said Angle. "Out of respect for the will of the people and their right to vote, I am obligated to contest the outcome of this election and request a special election." According to an article in the Nevada Appeal, Elections Deputy Ellick Hsu said Nevada's 17 county elections officials estimated costs totaling $115,000 to do the recount and Sequoia Voting Systems, which manufactured and programmed the machines, said it would charge $175,000 - a total of $290,000. This money would need to be deposited by Angle campaign before a recount would be conducted. The cost of a re-vote would be significantly more and would be borne by the counties effected. While the total cost is unknown, Washoe county registrar of Voters Dan Burke estimated that the cost would be $400,000 in his county alone. There were conflicting assessments of the degree of disenfranchisement that took place on Election Day. At the press conference Angle said that Burke had reported several errors in the primary which she claimed "clouded the outcome of the election to the point that the true winner is unknown." In a Las Vegas Review-Journal article Angle was quoted "The registrar of voters does not know who the winner of this election is because of the errors committed during this election. What we want is for them to give us a new election where we will have every vote counted and every voter who wants to vote to have the opportunity to vote."  Secretray of State and Congressional candidate Heller (pictured at left) is left in the awkward position of campaigning for the general election just two months away, and being involved in an election challenge both as a candidate and as the state’s chief election official.In the same Review-Journal article Heller said there were a few delays in opening six polling places in Washoe County but agreed with Burke that only a handful of voters would have been affected. The last polling place to open did so 45 minutes late, and those who could not vote earlier might have returned to cast ballots, he said. "On a scale of one to 10 for election problems, this doesn't even count as a fraction of one," Heller said. University of Nevada, Reno, political scientist Eric Herzik called the lawsuit "a desperate ploy." He said he had never heard of such a tactic being used in Nevada. "Recounts are rarely ever successful, and when they are, we're talking a couple of dozen votes rather than 400," he said. "She clearly realized she couldn't win a recount." Herzik added that he didn't expect the lawsuit to get anywhere. "She has to show specific intent" to deny people's right to vote, he said. "Then she has to show that enough people were specifically denied the ability to vote. And then she has to show that the people who were denied were her voters." Angle said Friday that she will file her lawsuit in state court on Tuesday. Comment on This Article
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